Fresh home-made food every day
A great day starts with a great breakfast. For this morning I prepared chocolate and walnuts little breads, just out from the oven. And a fresh smoothie with pineapple, cantaloupe melon and strawberries. How about you? How do you start your day?
When in a hurry, pasta are quite handy to fix a dinner. But pasta without sauce… So This time I made a rapid topping with one new onion, half paprika and a piece of thick fried tofu (aburage). All cut in small pieces, cooked brieftly in olive oil and seasoned with oregano and laurel, salt and pepper. Delicious with pasta, but also gnocchi and risotto.
Every one knows wasabi, this green paste very hot eaten usually with sushi. Actually wasabi is a plant and the green paste is obtained from the stem, peeled and grated. In spring, the leaves of wasabi can be eaten. It’s a delicate vibrant green leaf that is better slightly steamed or boiled and that accomodates very well rice and Japanese dishes.
I cooked it in a vegan version of a Japanese meal, with miso and sesame eggplants, pickled vegetables, rice with cereals and the wasabi leaves just steamed and served with ponzu.
A few years ago we went to visit Hachijojima, an island down south of Tokyo in the Pacific that belongs to Tokyo actually. Besides being a lovely place, famous for their handwoven beautiful fabric used to make kimonos, their is one typical product from there: angelica, or ashitaba (明日葉).
Ashitaba is a green leaf that doesn’t smell much but once cooked as a very typical taste. Something that once you have tried you want to eat again! In France it is use to make sweets (the green slighly discusting sticks Of candied fruit on gateau des rois for example). While we were in Hachijojima we had ashitaba tempura, ashitaba sherbet and a few other variations. Completly enfatuated with this taste I bought a cooking book of ashitaba there, which presents a great variety of recipes, from rice with ashitaba to green smoothies, so not just typically Japanese recipes. They grow some ashitaba in Chiba prefecture, so when spring comes I easily can buy some in Ohara. In Tokyo, department stores and Yoshiike definitely have some. I tried a few recipes from the book at home to get used to processing ashitaba and came out with a few simple recipes on my own now. My super favorite is ashitaba-mashed potatoes. It makes a perfect combination, and it is really a great match with scrambled eggs, grilled pork…
An other nice combiniation is to use ashitaba as a substitute for basil. With tomatoes and olive oil, perfect to top with some pasta.
I’m still trying new recipes while the season of ashitaba goes on, so you may from it again!
A quick recipe for a power lunch: buckwheat flour, 2 eggs, some cheese, a few spinach. Mixed altogether and cooked as a thick galette. Prepared in 1 min, cooked in 7 min, perfectly delicious and full of energy for busy afternoon.
As I was telling you earlier, spring means a lot of fresh wild vegetables. After the fukinoto the bamboo shoot is probably the next to be found in Isumi area. In particular, the area close to Ohtaki is particularly great for delicious takenoko (bamboo shoot in Japanese). It’s also a great fun to go and pick them. This variety of bamboo shoot is the large one (8 to 15cm diameter), there exists a small one (1 to 3cm) that arrives later and that is even much more fun to pick.
Preparing fresh bamboo shoot is really easy, though a bit time consuming. First of all you need to peel the hard and hairy skin. It peels like a artichoke, so it’s really easy.
Then you need to boil it in something that would remove the bitterness of the wild shoot. In supermarket they often sells nuka (what is used for the pickles) and I was using that until I learn from an old lady at the local farmers cooperative that the first wash of rice was perfectly efficient. Since then I’ve usjng that, and believe me it’s much easier to clean than nuka. You need to boil for 30 to 60min, until soft (you can pick a toothpick easily in). Once cold you can cut and then boil in dashi for 15min. I used katsuo dashi. You can eat now, or add to rice for a “takenoko gohan”. For this I start cooking the rice as usual, then at mid cookjng time I add the bamboo shoot sliced vertically and a little of soya sauce. Delicious to accompany red snapper or bonito.
Ideally you would serve takenokoto with leaves of “ki no me” the leaves of the mountain pepper tree (sansho), mine in the garden is not yet ready…
I love vegetable sauté and all the possible combinations.
It is often that around Thursday the fridge starts to be empty because I shop mainly my fresh fruits and vegetables in the country on weekends. Adding a few dinners out for work and a busy schedule, I couldn’t refill at the local shops in Koganei, so I must say that it happens that I arrive home with pretty much nothing to eat and the only option is the little supermarket round the corner. Not too bad but not too great either. It ended up in cooking a tomatoes andbasil pilaf. Boiled some rice, then in a frypan with olive oil add some roughtly cut tomatoes and basil leaves, salt, pepper, in a circle in a plate, and ready!!! If you have leftover of rice it’s even faster! If you want to top it with some parmegiano perfect!
I discovered just recently while on a trip to Nagano prefecture that in Japan they grow some sticky millet. It looks very much like millet but once cooked it is much stickier.
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